What RTW travel blog can be complete without the cheesiest possible shots that have been done to death by tons of people the world over in front of majorly recognizable sights? Surely not this one! No matter how cliché, Jenn and I had both never seen the UNESCO listed Piazza del Duomo in Pisa and wanted a chance to hold it up the leaning tower, knock it over, and make general fools of ourselves. Our train taking us from Cinque Terre to Florence (Firenze to the locals) passed right through Pisa…so how could we not just pop out for some quick shots in front of this iconic Italian building? Well, we couldn’t. And they are cheese-tastic let me assure you!

We hopped off of the train in Pisa, and I am not sure why, but for some reason I expected the leaning tower to be right within the view of my seeking gaze. It wasn’t. And, we didn’t have any map/directions/indication of how to actually get to the leaning tower. You would think that with all of the tourists coming through here it would be more straight forward…perhaps that’s just me as an American talking though. We were only popping into Pisa for a couple of hours for pictures of the tower, lunch, and then onward the hour or so to Florence so we had all of our packs with us and sun was beating down as we paraded over to the bus stop to try and read the time tables.

Torre, Torre, Torre…Though we searched for a route to the torre, or tower, alas there was nothing quite so straight forward. Helen and I both have a bit of Italian under our belts and Jenn’s got Spanish, so we all branched out to inquire from strangers just how to get to the tower. One guy took pity on me and actually grabbed my hand (we were having trouble communicating in our mangled Italian/English) and walked me 500 feet around a corner and deposited me at a bus stop. Thanking him profusely with a mille grazie, I hollered for Jenn and Helen and we all waited mere minutes before hoping on a bus 4 – which dropped us off right on the doorstep of this tourist attraction.

Jenn and I parted ways with Helen who had already seen the leaning tower and was going to use the time to catch up on work, dropped our bags behind Helen’s chair in the coffee shop and then went to work for the next 45 minutes crafting a slew of pictures at the leaning tower. We took a walk around the complex and the churches and other structures were beautiful.

It really was wild though to see this huge structure just leaning precariously from behind the church. The ground under the tower is slanted sharply and they have actually had to replace a lot of the lower columns with stronger substances to withstand the unnatural weight of the building.

The tower and the the spectacular cathedral are pretty much the highlight of the town (we didn’t pay to go up the tower so we actually went into the back entrance of the cathedral so Jenn could pray/free way to see the inside) and once that was done we grabbed lunch and a gelato, strapped on our packs and headed over to the tower for one last picture with Helen this time. We wanted a picture of the three of us with our packs and ice cream and all of the tower. This is actually a tall order (no pun intended). As I am sure everyone has experienced, some people just don’t seem to understand that when you ask for a shot of you in front of a major monument…you kind of want the monument!

So we bided our time and chose as our mark – two women in their late twenties jabbering in English – perfect. The girl taking the picture was actually so committed to getting the shot right that she  kneeled down on the ground even though she was wearing pristine white pants – now that is commitment I can respect! The shot looked great, we reciprocated and got a great one of the two of them, and then hoofed it over to the bus stop so that we could catch the train to Florence.  As the sun beat down, Jenn acted as Helen’s human shade…I lost my camera case taking this shot because the bus pulled up just as I was taking it, I jumped up off of the stoop, hopped onto the bus, and then looked back to see my little black case waving goodbye to me from the sidewalk. At least I still have the camera, right!

New RTW Stats page filled out!

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Reading: Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov – this man has no redeeming qualities at all and the novel is creepy…really well written, but creepy!

On My Faux-Pod: Dookie Album by Greenday

Where am I really? Slovenia – and it rained all day!

The trip to Cinque Terre is entirely for the five-hour hike that hugs the coastline and took us from the water’s edge to cliffs high above the sea, and then back down again as we passed through the five small towns. Cinque Terre is unapologetically spectacular. Some backpackers I meet scoff at the tourist beat – and Cinque Terre is definitely on the tourist beat, but to miss this gem would just be an atrocity. Even Helen loved Cinque Terre and she shuns the sun with full on red-headed fear that simply cannot be understood if you’re not of the “instantly-burn” variety.

We picked out the cheapest hostel we could find (Cinque Terre Holidays – and it was quite decent actually and even had handy lockers for our laptops if you have your own lock…which we did!) and decided to annoy the other hostelers in our dorm by waking up by 7:30am so that we could make it through the bulk of the hike in the cool morning hours. The only set-back to our plan was the fact that the blasted trains don’t run to Monterosso, our chosen start point, at that time in the morning! The Cinque Terre hike is designed so that avid hikers can do the whole run from the first town to the last in five hours – and those who want to enjoy the spectacular views without the actual strenuous hike can stick to the first two hours. The last hour and a half is hard and we initially intended to train it to the first town and hike the hard part in the morning. The only snafu – we sat on a bench in our morning stupor for at least a half hour before checking the time-table to realize that a train wasn’t coming for another hour!

So instead of the original plan we started from Riomaggiore along the strolling part of the hike. But there were no worries in that regard because there just isn’t a bad part of the hike. The path hugs along the cliff edge and nearly every time we turned a corner for a new vista our mouths hung agape.

One of the best parts of the hike is coming up on one of the little towns – we would literally emerge, panting, from between some trees and a little Italian town with colorful stacked houses was perched in an inlet with boats bobbing in a nearby harbor. There is just something compelling about Italian architecture – it’s not so much the style of the houses but the color really – it’s just so Mediterranean and exotic. It seems as though every cookie-cutter suburb in the US is trying to duplicate this look – and failing miserably! Without the sparkling blue sea or the rolling grape fields something about it is just not right, I tell you, it’s just not right.

I haven’t hid from you guys my feelings toward hiking – love/hate – but there is simply nothing to hate about the hike. Once we made it through to the fourth town we had the last and hardest part of the hike ahead of us –an hour and a quarter hike from Vernazza to Monterosso. By now it was about 10:30am and there was only one thing on all three of our minds…gelato!

I had one of the best gelatos of my life –and it wasn’t even one of my favorite flavors! Because the day was shaping up to be a scorcher we all opted for one of the icy flavors versus the creamier gelatos –the Limone was so good that I, in fact, take a moment of silence in my memory right now as I write this. As a tip for anyone heading on this same Cinque Terre hike – the gelato shop is un-missable and directly in front of you as you step into the town of Vernazza from the south trail entrance…truly worth a visit.

Fortified by the gelato we headed onward to tackle the very vertical part of the hike – from Vernazza to Monterosso. This is BY FAR the hardest part and we were all doing some impressive huffing and puffing along the route. About 40 minutes in I was nearly losing the will to continue (it was hot!) when another hiker coming from the other direction noticed my delightfully attractive splotchy red face and gave me the best news of the day –it was all down hill from here!

Walking into Monterosso’s bay with a white sandy beach sent up little squeals of glee as we stripped down to our bathing suits and jumped into the icy cold waters of the Ligurian Sea. After  a hike like that we feasted and rewarded ourselves with another gelato (nocciola, hazelnut this time…hey, I said I didn’t plan to show self control!).

Then we jumped onto the local train to head back to Riomaggiore to relax for the rest of the day. Internet in this town is wicked expensive and hard to find so I was glad that we were heading onward to Florence the next day to a hotel with some rampant wifi – that fact warmed my little technology-addicted heart.

I was thoroughly exhausted from nearly 40 transit hours (Kathmandu to Delhi – 22 hours in Dehli – Dehli to Helsinki and then onward to Milan) when I landed in Milan, then Helen and I bused our way to the Central Train Station to then turn around hoofed it the 15 minute walk to our hostel rendezvous meet-point with Jenn. Jenn arrived earlier in the day and spent her hours wandering through the parks and panting her way up the windy staircase to the top of Milano’s beautiful Duomo. Helen and I both visited the city previously so we spent just one night in Milan. A bit about our newest addition to the backpacking team – Jenn is an actor/model living in LA but with her roots also set firmly in the shallow Florida soil…she and I were on the same interactive improv team in college and bonded/commiserated in the beginning days of living in Los Angeles.!

Jenn packed pretty smartly for the trip and, I admit, I was immediately jealous of her possessions. Leaving on this rtw travel adventure, I was really hugely content with doing a year traveling around the world with just a 52-liter pack and a front pack for my full-sized computer. But pocket-sized Jenn (she’s about 5’3” I think…and I am sure she will correct me if I’m wrong!) brought along pocket-sized belongings and made minimalist travel an art. Her small ruck-sack backpack came in at just 45 liters and she added a small camel-pack that nicely held her 8-inch notebook computer. Now, a note on the ruck-sack style pack – the only drawback was the fact that it only allowed top-loading…party foul and a pain in the ass the whole time because she had to unload everything to get to stuff in the middle and bottom. But other than that, I come to the sad conclusion that my 15-inch laptop is a bit excessive; I plan to downsize the front pack to a camel-pack next year when I hit South America (still love my 52-liter though). Her streamlined look suits perfectly for her few weeks here with us…plus she brought me some US treats (like my favorite deodorant!) so that was like manna from heaven.

Anyhow, with Jenn now on the team the three of us headed south two and a half hours to the Ligurian coast. Our chief goal? To hike along the spectacular coast that runs through Cinque Terre, an area, quite literally, named after the five tiny Italian villages sprinkled along this stunning coast. It’s a UNESCO site which is actually pretty awesome because otherwise I fear that the rampant tourism would have this coastline washed into the sea within a decade.

The train ride from Milano was pretty simple and the countryside grew in beauty the closer we got to Cinque Terre…a highlight of the ride were Jenn’s squeals of delight as the train chugged out of Milano Centrale to take her on her very first train ride…I am a bit jaded right now  I have to admit – at this point I’ve logged more than 200 hours probably on more than 40 trains (India and Australia are a HUGE countries!). Jenn’s delight though brought me out of that travel weariness and back into the moment – trains really are one of the best ways to take in the countryside and our trained hugged the shimmering coast for hours.

I will admit this right now because anyone who has traveled with me has learned – transportation puts me to sleep. It doesn’t matter how pretty it is outside or how uncomfortable the position (except for the hilarious head-bobby sleep, I can’t do that, that’s actually Helen’s style and she will kill me for writing that!) I can nod off at a moment’s notice. Jenn took a special delight in snapping the really unflattering photos of me that, in a moment of vanity I am declining to post. But it would be remiss of me at this point to not note that both Helen and Jenn now love to show me just what it looks like when I fall asleep huging my bag and proping myslef on one elbow – so very lovely…not.

Anyhow – the girls poked me awake as we reached our stop and we were all taken aback by the the magic of stepping off of the train at Monterosso – we were awed. The late afternoon sun’s blindingly bright orangey glow glinting off of both the clear blue water and the glistening human bodies tanning on the sandy beach. We found cheap hostel accommodation in the last of the five towns, Riomaggiore, so we hopped onto the small local train connecting the towns along the coast and hopped off in a tiny little one-road town lined with a handful of tourist shops and a smattering cafes – the road dead-ends into a darling little harbor with boats bobbing on the surface on the glassy surface.

With an hour to kill before checking into the hostel, we plopped down in a café with all of our belongings and ordered up a panini to tide us over. I have a love affair with Italian food even though I am not actually much of a carb junkie. Months in India eating knock-off Western food (only occasionally because I love me some Indian food) had me craving the plump juicy red tomatoes available in every hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant and café. Indian and Nepali pizzas contain a distinct “other” flavor that made Italian style pizza the lead star in many of my dreams throughout the past five months. I opted for a warmly toasted tomato, mozzarella, and pesto  panini and boy did it hit the spot. We rounded out our snack with a stop at the gelateria.

I warned Helen way back in India that I planned to show absolutely no self control when it came to Italian gelato. When I was living in Italy during a summer program in college, gelato was a thrice daily occurrence and I feel strongly that this is, really, the only way to effectively and happily travel through the country! My standby is pistacchio with straciatella as a runner up…this time around though I vowed to branch out from these two flavors…that was very challenging because I am a creature of habit in so many  regards (I’ve loyally stood by mint chocolate chip ice cream for 25 years now, never shunning this flavor as my favorite in American ice cream!) and pistacchio gelato is simply amazing.

I succumbed to my favorite for my first gelato in the country and checked into the hostel with some pretty fantastically happy taste-buds. The hostel met our needs and even boasted some free laundry…a note of combined disbelief and excitement made my voice creep up an octave when I asked Jenn “Does that say free laundry?!?” I have hand-washed every single item in my pack for months now and didn’t need much of an invitation to dump it all onto the bunk, scoop it up, and gallop downstairs to throw it into the washing machine.

When my spasms of laundry joy subsided we ventured out for a quick dinner where we got had…they brought us a plate of tomatoes and bread and implied that it was all on the house…bread is fairly customary here so we ate it up and happily downed the tomatoes too…no one mentioned that they were four Euros until after we ate them! We headed to bed early so that we would be refreshed and ready to tackle the signature five hour hike along the Ligurian coastline.

There is a very distinct rhythm to life in the developing world –things happen day after day often enough that you just forget that life could be lived any other way. For me, carrying toilet paper in every pocket of my clothes was just second nature. My whole days in Nepal were built around the timing of electricity for the day. Another fun part of traveling throughout India and Nepal…hand-washing laundry. Ahh, that is one of those things that just becomes a part of the routine.

In India we were able always find an extremely cheap laundry service where a women would take the pile of dirty clothes (minus the underwear – those you have to hand wash all throughout the country) early in the morning then wash ‘em, dry ‘em and give them back in a neat stack at the end of the day. The funny thing about Indian laundry – it’s completely authentic and ages your clothes about one year for every washing…just picture that every item of clothing you have seen me wear in the pictures has been slapped onto rocks, beaten into the earth, and stains were scrubbed clean with stones…the nubs on my clothes popped up within the first washing.

But, not to be a complainer because arriving in Pharping to teach I was informed that my own to arms would now have to scrub and beat the dirt out of my clothing using a small detergent cake, a big blue bucket, and a lot of elbow grease. Within the first washing my fingers were raw from the effort of rubbing clothes together. I began to dread doing the sniff test on my clothes and would pretend that they were clean for days longer than I would have if I’d had a laundry machine at my disposal (and don’t judge! the sniff test is a key secret to backpacker life…I could never wash my clothes nearly as frequently as I do at home…you just have to accept it, embrace it, do it, and move on!).

So with all of this in mind and my day to day life fairly acclimated to the intense pace and generally controlled chaos I headed back into the developed world with dreams of Italian gelato floating through my head. Touching down in Helsinki for my layover was the first time in a long time that I consciously noticed how poorly things work in the developing world! Stepping out of the plane I was greeted by more white people than I have seen in five months, the gleaming glow of electricity, and icy-cold air conditioning blasting through the entire airport – and WiFi throughout when we plugged in our computers!

I walked through the airport with Helen with my mouth agape at the gleaming clean, shining and blindingly bright advertisements sitting behind glossy glass and framed in a sophisticated black. Indians and Nepalis love color – lots of color…color on the walls, color in the clothes, it’s everywhere. Now though, there is more modernism and commercialism within one glance than I have seen in five months…and there I am in my grimy blue Indian kurtah that has weathered 22 hours in Delhi and a loooong flight to Helsinki. Woah…

Helsinki was a big shock…the bathrooms were fully stocked with toilet paper and I had to actively resist the urge to grab some extra and stuff it in my pockets for later use…it took some serious self-control!  Helen and I had an absolutely hilarious crisis moment coming through customs in Helsinki. Helen had just purchased a mini-jar of Skippy peanut butter in Kathmandu (the perfect travel-sized jar) and the man scanning the bags pulled it out and informed us that it is considered a liquid.

In one of our classiest moments to-date we pulled out our travel spoons and began to shove the  heaping spoonfuls of peanut butter into our mouths. The security guard chuckled, the other passengers stared, and we concentrated on consuming the sticky substance as I fought the back a gagging urge to puke. Finally the guard gently removed the rest of the jar from our fingers and told us to move along…I really have nothing to say for myself except that it was born out of a love for peanut butter, a fear of never seeing peanut butter again, and the nonsensical state of mind that comes from 5 months in the developing world.

Helen and I spent our entire first week exclaiming “I forgot this existed!” “The train is on time…it’s here right now!!” or “Wow, it doesn’t smell like cow crap!” We oogled at the huge grocery stores and again…it was actually surreal to be surrounded by so many Caucasians and people speaking English everywhere we turned.

Good Bye Himalays - from plane out of Kathmandu

With a little taste of the first world under our belts we headed boarded our next flight that would take us to Milan, Italy…home of gelato and a meeting spot for Jenn!!  My dearest friend from Florida/LA emailed me several months ago for a rough outline of my itinerary and any of my locked down dates…she took that information, matched her flight to mine and arrived in Milan on the same day to join the backpacking trip for the three weeks through Italy and Croatia!  Jenn shares Helen and my love for hiking (ok, my love for hiking is overstated…it’s more love/hate!) and has a complete 100 percent matching love for ice cream in any and every form. The three of us started our journey with the knowledge that we were going to blow the budget out of the water for the ten days we were in Italy and instead just indulge our food senses on pasta, pizza, wine, and gelato. Welcome Jenn!

The time-line in Nepal was a little disjointed on the blog, but basically, the weekend after our trip to Chitwan Helen and I said our goodbyes to our monasteries, gave Amrit a huge hug, and headed to Pokhara to do the Poon Hill trek through the Annapurna region and subsequently my stint in solitary confinement (ie. the pain-staking mind-purification process known as Vipassana meditation)

I was really sad to leave my monastery… the boys are so extremely welcoming and I felt like I was actually making a difference for them. I really looked forward to the chorus of “Good Morning, Miss” I received when I walked through the monastery gates every morning. Now though I will have to suffice myself with the sweet memories and the off-hope that I will have the time and opportunity to come back here and teach/visit sometime in the future.

The relaxation of living in the small town of Pharping went right out the window when I had to contend with the stress of trying to get myself out back out of the country. I already mentioned some of my visa woes previously, but it deserves a bit of clarification for any blog readers in the future – the whole of my problem centered on the fact that you have to attain an Indian transit visa if your luggage is not checked straight through all the way out of the country. Because Helen and I planned to switch airlines in Delhi airport I had to obtain an Indian transit visa. This cost me a whopping $75 (including a bit of bribe money to expedite the process) so that I could travel  through the country for the day –that’s a whole lot if you consider that a six-month visa costs about $90 – it was funds I hadn’t anticipated and came as a bit of a blow.

Then, as I was scurrying around Kathmandu attempting to bribe my way out of my visa situation (it worked by the way) the political situation deteriorated and I was a bit thankful that I was on my way out of the developing world for a bit while the Maoist protests and marches shut down the streets and highways around Nepal in a bid for power because the Prime Minister stepped down.

My conclusions on Nepal are essentially wholly positive. I think that it was the volunteering opportunity that made me feel such a part of this country, but I do really love it. For me, a country has to have not only the physical beauty, but it’s really about the people. The nature and welcome of the locals is what makes the difference and has made countries stand out in my mind. The Nepali people are so earnest and friendly. Knowing the language has also made an immense difference. I won’t go so far as to say that my Nepali skills are huge –but I can bargain in the shops and do the rudimentary conversation…and that’s really all you need there to earn mad kudos.

One of the big reasons that I love the country was illustrated by the immigration officers as we were leaving and headed to Italy via India. Now, I have encountered a whole lot of steely-faced, humorless immigration officers –it seems to be almost an international behavior code –but that code just doesn’t hold in Nepal, the people are just too joyous. As we were moseying through the line one of the officers wondered what we had been doing in the country for seven weeks –and in our best Nepali we informed him we were volunteers. As if our display of conversational Nepali were not enough for some reason…fast forward ten seconds into that moment and somehow Helen and I are standing across the counter from the customs officer serenading him with our slightly off-key and mildly mispronounced Nepali songs.

He was so shocked and dumbstruck by our singing skills (not the actual melody…because I suck at that…but the effort was spot-on) that it took him at least four-five seconds before he started swaying and singing along. Within another couple of seconds the other immigration officers full-on abandoned their posts, circled around us, and joined in for the ending chorus of the patriotic “Nepali Ho.” The moment was so spontaneous and unexpected…and completely Nepali. I truly can’t imagine that flying at any other immigration post.

So, with that moment buoying our spirits we caught our short flight into the oppressing heat of Delhi –one last threshold barrier standing in our way to first world comfort.  Delhi was about 110 degrees and almost completely unbearable. We had a hellacious first few hours in the city. No one warned us that Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport has no luggage storage…and that possibility was just not even imaginable. The smallest train stations in India have had luggage storage but the airport doesn’t?! Unfathomable.

We ended up hoisting our packs onto our backs and deciding that it was a good idea to venture into Delhi for the day –not entirely sure what possessed us but I think it was a deep desire to shop at Fab India one last time. We sweltered in the heat for well over an hour while our driver drove around completely lost before jumping out, paying the man and seeking shade and cool drinks. The entire Delhi day was one of those never-ending travel days that is just compounded and made that much worse when you know that you are just a heartbeat away from the developed world.

Because of our early flight the next morning we opted against booking a hostel for our 20 hour layover and instead slept in the mosquito-y-hot waiting room. The one upside to the airport’s waiting facilities was the hot shower in the ladies’ room –I was so sticky and grimy with Dehli exhaust that I was thanking the heavens above for that opportunity to shower off the day.

As we entered the international terminal (you have to wait in the visitor’s lounge until three hours before your flight) I felt a sigh of relief come over me…I have loved so much about my five months in the developed world…but…at the same time, it’s a lot of work just to get through the  days sometimes. With a language and culture barrier some of the most simple of tasks become monumental…and though I took it perfectly in stride while I was there, there are creature comforts and foods that I have dreamed about for months. Gelato is tops on my list for the second that I touch down in Italy…after giving Jenn a great big welcoming hug of course.

My ability to sleep anywhere and in any position comes in handy on buses and trains:

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Reading: An Italian Affair by Laura Fraser

Listening to: Slum Dog Millionaire Soundtrack

Where am I really: Couch surfing in Slovenia and it’s raaaaiiiinnnning!

We rounded out our weekend in Chitwan with a ride through the local villages standing up in the back of the jeep with the wind blowing through our hair as we took in the last of our experience on our way to the Elephant breeding center. I don ’t really know how I feel about the breeding center –mixed really. Because the elephant population in Chitwan is not endangered they breeding center is used to breed the elephants that are raised to either do hard labor in the fields or take tourists around the National Park for the rest of their lives. I was a bit surprised and I guess I just figured that the breeding center was there to repopulate the forests…especially since this is a UNESCO site and therefore under international protection. I guess that captured elephants are fair game though since they are endangered.

So even though I had my reservations about the purpose of the breeding center we did make the ride out to the property to check out the baby elephants. The prize animals at the breeding center were twin baby elephants just three months old. This may not seem like such a big deal but according to our guide these twins are the only surviving elephant twins in Chitwan’s history and just the third set to be born here, period.

Twin elephants are extremely rare all  over the world and have a really low survival rate. Considering the extremely long gestation time for elephants (22 months!), I feel really bad for the momma elephant who carried these two little guys around for that long.

The twin elephants were loping along after their momma on their way back into the breeding center after leaving with the Mahouts in search of breakfast. The one really sad part about these pictures is the fact that the mother is in chains and it will only be a couple of years before these twins follow suite  =(

Another set of elephants, both about two and a half years old were extremely playful and trotted over to us as soon as we passed them. These two guys were really frisky and knew precisely what they wanted –any and all food that was in or bags or in our hands. One of them even walked straight up to me with his trunk extended and tried to take a little tasty of my camera! I assured him that the crackers in the other hand were tastier and pushed and nudged me until I had surrendered all of my food.

One of the final activities at Chitwan was a elephant ride through the jungle to try and spot wildlife. After all of the effort that I went to in Laos to not exploit the elephants, the jungle ride kind of defeated the purpose. But, I did it so there is no use mourning it…all I can do is learn from that an know that I probably could have skipped out on the Elephant riding. With that being said, had I not participated I would not have had the opportunity to see the one-horned Asian rhino. Because the rhinos are extremely dangerous on foot, the elephant was the perfect way to view them without risking serious dismemberment (and I am NOT exaggerating here, one of the other guides had just returned home from the hospital that day because of an attack by a wild rhino!). This rhino was fairly unperturbed by the three elephants circling him…he continued to munch the grass for several minutes before then standing perfectly still and doing a mini photo-shoot for us – he was much more tolerant than the Indian cow debacle!

In addition to the wild rhino I spotted several types of deer, spotted deer and barking deer most notably and even saw a peacock for good measure!

Our group really had no major issues throughout; one of the doctors, a Malaysian guy named Lip Choy was a riot – he took a picture of absolutely everything he encountered. Add to that the fact that he had just completed his own Vipassana Meditation course and he was a veritable chatter box the whole time. Jess and Regina were the two other additions to the Pharping crowd – Jess was amazingly spunky and fun; she just received her diploma in the US and is now a tried and true doctor. Regina is Portuguese and was volunteering in Chapa Goan at the clinic for a couple of months.

I have to say, even though Chitwan was generally safe throughout, it did feel better to have three doctors on the trip – I hope we didn’t bore them with our onslaught of symptoms and questions…after this long on the road Helen and I had a number of small things we wanted to make sure were healthy. Let’s just suffice to say that Asian water and food can do a number on your digestive system! All of the doctors cleared us on our symptoms and told us to wait it out until we rejoined the developed world.

As far as health concerns went throughout Chitwan, all seven of us chose to take anti-malarial medicine because of the parks tropical climate and proximity to India. I have totally opted against Malaria medication thus far in the trip (although it is recommended for all of SEA and India) and just brought deet – and while that worked really well I figured only an idiot would refuse  to take anti-malaria medication while all of the doctors in the group were doing it. I already had a three month supply so that was plenty for Helen and me to take recommended dose of Doxycycline every day (and for four weeks thereafter).

Exploring Chitwan was pretty amazing and I, hands down, believe that the elephant bathing ranks as one of the most fun experiences of the trip so far. Perhaps it’s just proximity to the event, but it was amazingly fun and productive for the elephant too!

A few more pictures:

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Ok, so I have to admit, I never actually got the chance to..well.. dodge a wild rhinoceros…but I did see one! And according to my guide throughout my three days at the UNESCO listed Royal Chitwan National Park, wild rhinos are the least of our worries – it’s the wild elephants that will charge you and attempt to rip your limbs apart by stepping on you with a foot and then wrenching your body apart with their trunk. This was essentially my welcome speech when I arrived at Chitwan. The whole group of VSSN volunteers decided to book an eco-friendly tour down to Chitwan together so that we could get a deeper discount and get to know each other more along the way. The four of us from Pharping joined the three VSSN volunteers (doctors) working at a hospital in a different small town in the Kathmandu Valley, Chapa Goan. The seven of us all trouped down to Chitwan for a weekend of elephant safaris, jungle walks, a canoe trip, and tours through the small native towns in the south of Nepal.

I have to confess…I had some really high hopes of just glimpsing some of the  endangered animals – the single horned Asian rhino is endangered and lives in the park, as does the Bengal tiger. I have a small obsession dating back to childhood with tigers and wouldn’t have minded spotting one (I did know that the likelihood was almost null). But at the same time I was glad that the animals are staying away from the touristy-ness. So, to sum up that part of my dream for the visit to Chitwan –the tiger spotting didn’t happen but the rhino put himself on full display.

I loved the Eden Jungle Resort and Lodge; they fed us fantastic food (it wasn’t even good in comparison to the dal bhat we normally eat every day, it was just plain awesome). The resort organized the entire weekend and our group had a personal guide taking us  around the national park. First up on the list was a walk through a local Tharu village. The villagers have lived at the border of the national park for decades and still live largely in the same traditional manner despite all of the tourists coming through. The houses seem to virtually grow out of the ground with their thatched roofs and clayed walls – it was really neat to walk on the outskirts and just get a glimpse of the villages without feeling intrusive and like a tacky tourist.

We started out our first morning in Chitwan with a canoe ride and jungle walk. One of the women with us, Jess, was particularly freaked out by the prospect of a jungle walk after our guide’s pep-talk about the danger of wild elephants and rhinos but she decided to stick out her fear and join in on all of the activities anyway. To skip the jungle walk she would have missed the leisurely early morning canoe ride down the Rapti River; we canoed down the river and then walked back through the jungle.

I have another confession to make –bird watching is about as interesting for me as watching paint dry or perhaps sitting in on a three-hour lecture on the intricacies of macroeconomics…it’s just not my style. But with that said, the canoe trip down the river was entirely engaging because it was so very calm and relaxing as we cruised down the river looking to  spot wild elephants and rhinos. In addition to the copious species of Kingfisher and egrets pointed out along the ride, we also passed by groups of local children clowning around in the river entirely  unconcerned with the canoe-load of tourists.

The canoe ride led into to the jungle walk…this was largely uneventful. I have one picture of a rhino that was sitting amongst the trees –it’s very “Where’s Waldo” esque though so I didn’t post it. Our guide was a bit prone to dramatics at some points…or maybe he really was hearing/seeing things we didn’t, but at about the time he picked up a big stick for protection the seven of us definitely tightened up the line and were a bit more aware of the fact that we were in the jungle and perhaps it’s a  bit more dangerous than a stroll through Central Park. Though we didn’t really spot any animals on the walk we did see some fairly new footprints of a leopard, some deer, and a few other animals that could probably have killed me if they ever happened upon the seven of us gentle tiptoeing through the jungle.

The best part of the whole trip to Chitwan was the elephant bathing after the jungle walk.We spotted the group elephants taking their morning baths and were eager to help these animals cool off while also having a bit of fun. The Mahout (elephant trainer) commanded the elephant to tip us at various points and to generally just play around a bit in the water. After our frolicking session we headed over to the shallow water and spent a few minutes rubbing Lakshmi (our elephant) down and scrubbing her thick, course and hairy skin. It was a really amazing experience to interact with the elephants on such a level without feeling like I was exploiting the animal for the mere sake of my entertainment…more of a trade-off really.

Once we were thoroughly cooled off and Lakshmi was headed back to work for the day we headed back to rinse off and spend the heat of the day indoors.

The evening was capped off with a traditional Tharu dance performed by a large group of the middle and high-school aged children. All boys, the Tharu dancers spent thirty minutes shaking every limb of their body and dancing to the beat of their clacking sticks. As a person who just fails miserably at doing any sort of shimmy, I give these boys mad props for their performance and the skill that it took throughout to captivate the crowd and entertain.

We went to bed happy campers – the only bummer of the day was the electricity situations…with the electricity situation as it is in Nepal our fan didn’t always work and Helen and I were sweating buckets throughout most of the night.

The Nepali New Year dawned bright and early our third week in Pharping and Amrit invited all of us volunteers staying at the guesthouse to celebrate the New Year with his family up a nearby hill. Both of the monasteries were closed for New Year festivities; so, without the invitation from Amrit we would have been just four lost souls living in a fishbowl…wait…ack…rather four decidedly white people wandering on the periphery of the familial festivities of the New Year.

Instead, Amrit, Carna, and a team of his Nepali family members descended on the guesthouse kitchen like chickens converging on their morning feed; they were so engrossed in the cooking of the day’s meal that they forgot our breakfast! Amrit shooed us out of the guesthouse after slapped-together breakfast just as the spicy scents of our picnic lunch were wafting through the rooftop kitchen-patio and gave us a hand-drawn map of the path up the hillside to the huge picnic area overlooking Kathmandu Valley.

We set off on the walk and were soon met by Amrit’s younger cousin who indicated that he would  lead us through the dry rice paddies and up the extremely steep hillside. I freaked out about a quarter of the way up the hill and turned around -we hadn’t eaten anything for hours and Amrit didn’t warn us that it was a 45 minute completely vertical hike. Luckily, just as I has half-way back to the guesthouse Amrit pulled up on the motorcycle to zoom me up the dirt pathway that snakes up to the topmost monastery on the hill.

Once everyone was settled in Carna dished up the huge selection of food…and for the first time ever I watched Amrit eat a meal that didn’t include dhal bhat! Our meal consisted of puffed and pounded rice, lightly curried veggies, potatoes, a pav bahji type mix of crunchy toppings and an ice cold beer in a tiny plastic cup.

Our luck didn’t hold for long though and the overcast sky unleashed it’s furry in a sudden downpour that sent us all huddling beneath the thin covering of some tall trees. After minutes of standing and wondering about a next move Amrit, Carna, and the four of us headed further up the hill in the lightly sprinkling rain to check out the large hillside monastery before the full force of the rain storm descended. We got to the entrance gate of the monastery when another 10-minute downpour trapped about 30 of us under a small awning.

One Nepali guy saved the day by pulling out his guitar and serenading us with an eclectic mix of highly appropriate English songs like Have you Seen the Rain and patriotic Nepali songs like Nepali  Ho, by 1974 AD. We latched on to the Nepali Ho song with an instant affinity for the passionate singing of all of the Nepalese in the vicinity as they shouted out the chorus and finished with an emphatic Nepali ho!!, translated as “I am Nepali!!”

Helen's serenading our neighbors with her rendition of "Nepali Ho" - They loved it!

This song was later one of our prime trump cards when we were bargaining with the Nepalese in Thamel and Pokhara. If they wouldn’t lower the price we would bust into the chorus of this fiercely patriotic song and call out our “nepali-ness” at the end of the chorus with as much conviction as we could muster. And it always worked! They ate it up and ALWAYS joined in for the chorus.

As we were wandering back from the monastery to the main group Helen and I took Amrit by surprise by busting out with the phrase tapaai:laai pagal ho. Pagal is a Nepali word with a lot of different meanings apparently. Urmila, our Nepali language teacher in Kathmandu, indicated that we could use this phrase to tell a friend that they were being silly.

Amrit, though, was floored and immediately burst into uncontrollable laughter at the phrase. Although pagal can mean silly in some circumstances it actually means crazy/mad/insane/mentally retarded. So when I told Amrit, tapaai:laai pagal ho he heard “you are going insane,” or in Amrit lingo “you are going to the mad.”  This little video clip is Amrit’s reaction to our little display of Nepali language ignorance:

We didn’t let the rain stop us from having a pretty rocking time -it was a weird way to celebrate the New Year though because it is so vastly different from a Western New Year’s Eve celebration. There were no fireworks, no partying, and beyond our picnic lunch the day was very chill and relaxed and all about spending a relaxed afternoon with family…at least in this neck of the woods. We heard a rumor that the Kumari made one of her 13 yearly appearances in the courtyards around Durbar Square. We were away from all of that madness though and safe and sound in the isolation of a remote valley town.

Pharping is a fairly large town by Nepali standards -but…not so much by mine. Our largest local grocery store was far smaller than your average 7-11 and had about one of all of the most basic of necessities and not a whole lot else. Well, they had snickers bars too -so that was a saving grace for me; I have a wicked chocolate habit that was really hard to fill throughout Laos but much easier here -perhaps the Nepalese like snickers bars as well because nearly every shop offers them, even in our remote town! That made me a much happier Shannon all throughout my time in India and Nepal. Anyhow, moving on -the thought of chocolate sent me spiraling considerably off-topic! The grocery stores are really quite small because of the culture here, most of the food they eat is home-grown and processed foods are an expensive luxury that is unaffordable for most Nepali families.

My monastery had a large garden in the back that was developed specifically because of the high prices of actually buying foods at the markets -these towns are comparatively quite poor if you consider the tourism wealth that floods into Kathmandu. Out here in the Valley, Pharping is the heart of a farming culture and a lot of the people generally eat whatever they grow in the gardens. At the monastery, by planting a garden the boys are all able to eat fresh vegetables every single day as a key part of their diet. Even with the veggies though, dhal bhat is the meal of choice here.

Breakfast and dinner were provided for us by the guesthouse and they got much tastier after I had a thorough heart-to-heart with Matrika. Basically we ate eggs and a pancake for breakfast and rice, dhal bhat and veggies for dinner with the occasional momo night thrown in to add excitement. Lunch at the monastery was fantastic -most of the meals were vegetarian and included the staple of rice and dhal bhat with a different variety of greens and potatoes every day.

I have to admit, I am not the biggest fan of the Asian diet. Their daily diet is remarkably different from my US diet – and after four months already on this side of the world…it’s getting a little old. But at the same time, I am used to it/resigned. The six weeks I spent in Laos and Cambodia kind of prepped me for the Nepali diet of rice every single day (at the Cambodian orphanage we ate it two and sometimes three times a day!).  Sadly, although I really anticipated Nepali cuisine to borrow a big influence from Inida there were few curries to be seen and little variety in the daily dishes. When I questioned my monks about their diet they couldn’t imagine anything different. I told them that in the US I would be lucky to eat rice more than once a week and they were basically horrified -although I find their diet strange, they are just as cultured shocked by the idea of a US diet.

As a special treat, after dinner the four of us would all troupe 45 seconds  up the hill to the local restaurant, the Snow Lion, for curd and spicy hot chia tea.  When we were lucky, one of the four of us remembered to pick up a mango earlier in the day and we feasted on curd and mango -a tasty dessert option I’d never even considered until living in South Asia for three months but that I now find really enjoyable!

We had to time our outings just right, though, because the whole town shuts down by eight! Restaurants are closed, streets deserted, dusty food-shops with shutters tightly closed and its often pitch-black because of the power shortage.  And even though we warned Amrit we were leaving for dessert, he would lock the door. I was forced to gently knock around 8:30 and he would come audibly shuffling down the hallway in his night-clothes and shower shoes, shouting from just the other side of the locked door “Ssannon? Ssannon is that you? Why are you out so late Ssannon?”  He wouldn’t pull the lock until I again explained the need for dessert and then confirmed that it was safe to open the door because it was just the four of us…as if  in this sleepy little town of 30,000 people someone else is knocking on the door at that ungodly hour of the night! 

With the main meal situation resolved Louise, Cara, Helen, and I traveled into Kathmandu on Saturdays to stock up on snacks. For some reason a large portion of my days are centered on the procurement of food, the eating of food, and the ponderings about the next meal/snack…am I food obsessed or is this normal?!

In addition to shopping at the larger grocery stores for snacks we used the time in Thamel to pick  up our cheap (but nice!) souvenirs on the tourist-crowded streets of Thamel. Thamel is a bit of a sensory overload…it’s a dose place. The vendors constantly nagged me to enter their shop if I so much as passed a fleeting glance at the pashminas, silk scarves, wooden carvings, Tibetan signing bowls, and other goodies lining the streets. Another of my key Nepali phrases was chhahi daina - roughly translated as “I don’t need.” If that didn’t work then a sharply punctuated jaau! (go!) got the message across while speaking to them in Nepali also communicated to them that we were not just random tourists wandering the streets…effective on all accounts to my way of thinking.

One of the great things about Nepal is the fact that the Nepalese just LOVE it if you try to speak their language. Helen and I scored not only major kudos with the street vendors for bargaining in Nepali, but we also scored some pretty awesome discounts. But as I said, the tourist section of Kathmandu is intense and not tolerable for long periods of time so I was always glad to head back to Pharping at the end of the day.

The bus ride between Pharping and Kathmandu was actually quite an adventure nearly every time we stepped foot on a Nepali bus. Sometimes the buses were perfectly empty and we had room to sprawl across the torn and dirty seats with curly springs poking out. Other times, Helen and I were wedged between bodies with one hand protecting the top of our heads and the other hanging on for dear life as the bus hurled itself around corners, bumped down the combination dirt and paved roads, and snaked through the hillside back Pharping.

Helen and I were particularly unlucky twice and did part of the hour and a half bus ride hunched over, necks cranked sideways, and eyes fearfully glued to the road in anticipation of the innumerous bumps that would launch our bodies periously close to the roof. As two very, very tall girls by Nepali standards (and most standards, really) these Nepali buses were not made for us…they had maybe five feet seven inches of floor to roof space…ramro chhaina!

One of the best parts about the trip into Kathmandu was the Baskin Robins stand half-way between the bus station and town. Every single time we road out of town we stopped in here to wrap our taste buds around this  sweet, creamy, and welcomed taste of home. Just walking up to the ice cream stand threw me back into the developed world and brought about images of Cold Stone Creamery as I inhaled the scent of delicious scent fresh waffle cones cooking.  I’m an ice cream fanatic under the best of circumstances but I have to say, the first lick of my ice cream cone nearly brought tears of joy to my eyes…ok, I’m lying…it did bring tears of joy.

We always had to keep an eye on the time while we were in Kathmandu though because the last bus for Pharping left the station by 5:30 and in Nepali time that could mean 6:00 or 5:00…or anywhere within the vicinity of those times. Once on the bus we strapped on our face masks in the hopes that our lungs were not blackening by the day (someone observed that we look like bank robbers…my response “Sweet! Now the mask can do double duty!). Health-wise, Kathmandu and the third world in general is just really polluted; Helen actually developed a prolonged dry cough as a reaction to all of the exhaust pollution that she inhaled during her daily 45 minute walks along the highway to get to her monastery. We were all really glad for the investment in the face masks and if I ever come back here I will definitely bring a higher quality mask from the states.

The monastery, probably like any boarding school, runs on a pretty regimented time-table. The boys have classes everyday except Saturdays and throughout the day have only brief breaks. Tea-time was my favorite part of the afternoon. Nepali chia is different than Indian chai but really just as enjoyable if you like a lot of sugar in your spiced tea…which I do! The afternoon tea-break lasted for a half an hour and the boys were instantly jived to run out of the classrooms, grab their soccer balls and hackey-sacks and make full use of the large cement court-yard.

Most of the younger boys and myself would perch ourselves on a small patio area near the courtyard to enjoy our steaming hot chia while watching the older boys play sports. Classes were started and finished with the loud clanging/banging of a gong near my tea-spot and after several days of being so startled I spilled the boiling tea on myself the Class III boys ringing the gong would give me an emphatic “move Meeeeess” (Miss) before striking the small gong with all the force their 14 year old arms could yield.

When I first started at the monastery I really just continued teaching the boys lessons out of the books as Louise had been instructed. But, as they say, variety is the spice of life, and I quickly asked for permission to branch out from the very basic reading comprehension style daily lessons. Lobsang was very positive about me using any sort of creative games or lesson plans – stories and games were ideal for the younger boys while the older monks had great comprehension but a lot of grammar questions.  Helen came to my monastery to co-teach one day and suggested a lot of great games that she learned while working in Guatemala for two years.

There were two categories of games -the educational variety and the reward/fun games. It’s a testament to Helen’s creativity that they loved the educational ones just as much as the others. A big problem I was facing with the younger monks through level four was a lack of comprehension. They had wonderful reading skills but they weren’t understanding 60 percent of what they were saying. To combat this we slowed the lessons waaaaay down and focused on total comprehension of the lesson. Because my Nepali language is really basic we resorted to pantomime and gesturing to illustrate points and lessons. The biggest hit of my time there was a really simple game: the boys would read a story and then we would pick out all of the new vocab and assign relevant gestures. For example, for the word “tap” they would  have to drum their fingers on their desk, “whisper” was easy and but other words necessitated a bit of imagination stretching. Once the gestures were assigned I would randomly tell a story that included the vocab -every time I said a keyword the team that did the corresponding gesture first received a point. They got really competitive with the game and it was a huge hit -plus super easy for me and it drilled the vocab into their heads so that was a double plus.

As far as the non-education games were concerned – these were easy I just had to think back to my hours spent in R-Club after-school care throughout elementary school. Everything from Simon Says to Mother May I scored me major points plus Helen’s addition of Red, Green, Yellow kept them massively entertained if the gong was late in ringing -and Class IV just always opted for Hangman!

Also, everyday before classes and meals the boys would line up and chant a two minute prayer…here is a short snipet of morning prayer outside of the classrooms:

I really loved the energy and feeling that suffused the grounds during their chants – it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside even though I didn’t understand a word…I think prayer is one of those things that transcends actual comprehension 

Two of Helen’s little nuns:

Here are a few other of my monks: